from all of us here. do not forget to vote on november 6. enjoy the rest of your day. >> new york times best-selling author is our guest on in-depth fiction edition. our live call in program. her most recent book is a spark of light. other books include all great mores, lone wolf, plus 20 novels. edition-depth fiction with the author lays from new to 3:00 p.m. eastern. be sure to watch next month when brad meltzer will be our guest on book tv on c-span2.

joining us from new york. put your vote at risk. here in washington, kristin clark, who is the executive director. thank you for being with us. sident and executive director for the lawyers committee for civil rights under law. about whoaren't just is running, but it is about who is at the polls. think it is an important question for us to ask. this midterm election season has been like none other, in the sense that we've seen widespread and rampant voter suppression efforts at the local level in many communities. ground zero for this has perhaps been georgia, where we've seen

local officials on the ground in places like randolph county, seven ofo shutter off nine polling sites in an area that is rural, has a large african-american population. we worked to defeat that effort, and now we are fighting secretary of state brian level,t the state who has resurrected exact match, or flags asurrects, pending, voter registration forms that don't match perfectly information in the state's database. we know these databases are riddled with errors, so the likelihood that you will have a number or space corps-that does not square perfectly -- or a hyphen that does not square perfectly. we are seeing officials -- unnecessary and burdensome -- to keep americans from having their voice heard. host: there a piece saying don't

kemp him, the rap on brian is unfair, voting that the provisional ballots are real ballots and that people will have a chance to vote. who is right in this? don't think this is a case of all good versus all bad. i think we have two civil rights at stake here. one is, for many years, we had and completesion discriminatory behavior, especially in the american south. we had the civil rights bill to make sure there wouldn't be poll taxes, discriminatory literacy laws. we need to extend those rights to make sureture, everyone has the right to vote without being intimidated. at the same time, your viewers have another civil right. the right to not have your vote canceled out by somebody who shouldn't be voting. someone who was in prison, having gotten their rights back,

someone who doesn't exist or is a noncitizen. 16 years ago, when there was a bipartisan coming together after 9/11 in the florida recount, we passed the help america vote act. can do both in this country. we can protect the right to vote and make sure it is hard to cheat. and we can do both and that is what the law did. art about law says the federal --ernment can exchange, right to go in and sue the states if those databases were riddled with errors. in some states, 15 to 25% of the people on the roles are inaccurate. the obama administration, for eight years, specifically said we are not going to enforce that provision. so you had databases in georgia that were riddled with errors. the legislature passed the law, it went for judicial review.

it said, if there is not a match, you have to go to the polls, cast a provisional ballot, or bring your id and show that you are who you say you are and correct the error. those provisional ballots will be counted if the voter information is accurate. i don't think we want to make this more divisive than it has to be in this overheated election season. i think we can do both, protect the right to vote and be integrity of the ballot. host: you write the following in an op-ed. major problems have been tolerated for years, a 2012 report by the pew center on the state found that more than 1.8 million dead people were registered to vote. 2.7 5 million were registered in more than one state. a total of 24 million registrations were either invalid or an accurate, making the system vulnerable to fraud. kristen clarke, your response to the op-ed. guest: i agree with some of his points. all americans deserve the right to vote, we've shut down

literacy tests and poll taxes, but i think he's being disingenuous by not recognizing the very real threat that exists to voting here in 2018. some of those efforts he talked about from the 60's, we've left behind. but no doubt today, we see officials purging registration rolls, undertaking so-called "consolidation of polling sites," implementing measures like exact match. these are scenes that, when we they disproportionately impact minority voters and lock out the voices of eligible americans who deserve to have their voices heard. integrityhreat to the of the process he talks about comes when we talk about things like russia working actively to undermine our elections. machines that are outdated and hackable. issues playing out right now in are puttingvoters their vote on a machine and you have the state recognizing that there is an issue where those

votes are being switched over to another candidate. so let's talk about machines and the need to update and modernize them. let's deal with the russia focus on these rules and barriers that really lockout americans from our polls. fund, your response. we should worry about fixing our machines. we spend 1/10 of the money we on votingtm's as machines. kristen, you mentioned texas. in texas, the attorney general has indicted four people in a voting fraud ring, stealing people's absentee ballots from orlboxes, filling them in, going to elderly homes -- turns out that scheme was paid for by the former director of the democratic already in fort worth area so of course there are problems in texas, but there are also problems on the voter fraud

side. we are always told voter fraud doesn't exist. one of the reasons we can say that for some people is we don't actually look for it. in 2013, the new york city department of investigation, the official agency looking into fraud and abuse, sent out a bunch of undercover agents. nametried to vote in the of people who were dead, who were felons, or who moved out of the state. make 61 attempts to vote. 97% of them succeeded. in other words, because they didn't ask for id in new york, anyone could come in, give a name, and vote. the only three times they were stopped was when there were mistakes that were so obvious that no one would've not noticed, and the felon trying to vote in the name of the son of -- was being impersonated and the mother said, you can't vote. i know my son and you're not my son.

so if we had investigations along this line, we find problems everywhere. we should look at the voting machines, we should look at the hacking. we should look at voter integrity. we should look at these roles that have 24 million inaccuracies which the obama administration didn't address, and we should look at all of these things. put one other issue on the table. this piece is available on the new yorker website. voter suppression tactics in the age of trump. he quotes the nonpartisan brennan center for justice, that 99 bills in predominantly republican legislatures designed to diminish voter access in 31 states across the country. is that true or not? unfortunately, since the help america vote act, this has become too partisan of an issue. wasn't the case, because i think voter integrity is something both parties can come together on. they had a voter fraud problem in providence.

the democratic secretary of with the senior democratic minority state senator, howard ness, in the legislature, and the speaker of the house, mr. fox, also african-american, passed a voter id bill in overlap -- in rhode island. and that law is working well today. i wish we had that kind of cooperation, not just in rhode island but in other states. but it has become heavily politicized and i don't think it needs to be. i think there are ways to compromise, and i think we can , so we the freedom card can get people ids, clean up the voter rolls, improve the machines. and give everybody confidence our elections are free and fair. the new york times sunday review is focusing on this issue. two pieces, blocking the ballot box, and how to make a voter. reminding voters of their

abilities to cast ballots. from your standpoint, kristen clarke, does this prevent people from going to the polls? to deter don't want people from exercising their most sacred right. we want to make it easier. when we look at how the united states measures other modern democracies around the globe, we are always near the bottom when it comes to turn out and participation, and that is for one reason. withve become obsessed andoting photo id laws burdensome restrictions that make it hard for people to get on registration rolls. we should be talking about automatic voter registration. making election day a holiday. using the rules on early voting and absentee voting and doing everything we can to make sure eligible americans are able to exercise their voice on election day. people, what we have is

who tout isolated examples here and there of voter fraud that don't measure up, because what john fund leaves out is that denominator here that out of hundreds of millions of votes cast in elections in our country, voter fraud is not widespread. but instead, what we see are laws that have measurable impact on tens of thousands of voters who want to participate in our democracy. host: and we want you to participate in the conversation. (202) 748-8001 is the number for republicans, (202) 748-8000 is the number for democrats. is the president and executive director of the lawyers committee for civil rights under law, and john fund is the co-author of "who's funding". americans, less

likely to vote because they think their vote won't count because of fraud or accuracy. guest: that is one of the reasons that the majorities of asians, ofricans, of hispanics over 60% support the voter id laws she just criticized. i believe we can get beyond this voter id issue andrew young, the dr. martinidant of luther king, martin luther king the third, jimmy carter, and -- have endorsed the freedom card. securitytake a social card that every american has access to, putting a photograph identification on it. this would solve a lot of problems for people who claim don't have access or are too old to have original documentation of their birth or all of that. this has been proposed by leading democrats.

what happens is the obama justice department refused to to approve refused it. al sharpton and various civil rights groups have opposed the very my question is this. if the answer is, we can get people a voter id that helps them vote and helps them get access to government benefits, travel, other things like entering federal buildings where id is required, why don't we do that rather than spend all this money on lawsuits? if people like jimmy carter and bill clinton and martin luther king the third -- listenerselcome our on -- and on the bbc parliament channel. to those viewers in great britain, good afternoon. karen is joining us from oregon. -- to talk to john today. i was 8 -- challenger in 2012,

which means you go in and check there wasof people -- a democratic representative there who told me that she -- take her that down as a voter, then they saw me in the back of the room and i could barely hear the people calling the names of the people voting so i could check them off . her if theyasked could repeat the name and she told me i was interfering with the process. i never volunteered again to be challenger, because you can be arrested if you talk to voters while they are coming in or if you interfere with the election in any way. i did call the republican party and complain, but i wanted to make sure this got out there

because i was very nervous that , i was just trying to help the republican party out. it was just my comment and i hope you pass this along to make sure it doesn't happen to other people, because i have never volunteered again. host: john, your response. guest: well, of course republicans make this issue an important one for them. i had to mention who i think was hurt the most by voter fraud, especially inner cities, i would say reformed democrats and minority voters. go to st. louis. the founder of the black lives matter movement, business owner, used to be a gang member but reformed. he ran for state legislature against the machine democratic incumbent for state legislature. he lost because 140 absentee

ballots were sent without envelopes, and a judge looked at the evidence and said this primary is very close. these ballots are fraudulent, we are going to rerun. so six weeks after, he ran again and one with 76% of the vote. that may be a clue that there were irregularities and fraud. that was just in the state legislature. i talked to him and he said, and so has the former mayor of detroit who thinks he was in 2005,ut of the role minority reformers voting against machine democrats in places like greene county, alabama, detroit to kansas city, st. louis, often have -- stolen from them, and it is often proven. but when they go to the naacp and other civil rights groups and say we need help, too. having ourally ballots stolen in st. louis and detroit and greene county,

alabama, civil rights groups don't want to touch them. same with -- in mississippi, a political boss stealing votes of black and white voters, who was shut down and the entire county election system had to be taken over by the federal government. these aren't isolated cases, they are real court cases where minority voters have been victims of voter fraud, proven in court. host: what is the lawyers committee for civil rights under law? we are a nonpartisan, nonprofit civil rights organization founded 55 years ago by president john f. kennedy, who issued a call for action for lawyers to engage in the civil rights fight. that is what we've been doing and continue to do. one of the main things we've been doing is mounting voting rights litigation across the country, protecting the rights of tens of thousands of people -- aren't impacted today

and this problem is exacerbated we sadly have a justice department today that has not brought a single case to enforce the voting rights act, and it is exacerbated by folks random, isolated examples of those frauds to create a false sense of hysteria carrying outre out impersonation frauds. you have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than seeing some of what mr. fund is talking about. but what we see in our cases, where we engage experts who look at real data and look at systematic patterns across the state, is that in places like georgia, there were tens of thousands of people who did not have their voter registration secretary ofed by because of hisp, discriminatory exact match policy. here we are two years later, suing him again because the

state legislature has put that unlawful policy into law and he is enforcing it. so our organization is about ensuring that the civil rights importantns are most and that all eligible americans are able to exercise the right to vote. focus on georgia, because if the results mirror the polls, depending on who wins, do you think there could be an asterisk next to the winner or loser based on what is happening in the state of georgia? does have aia runoff provision. if you don't get 50%, they will have a runoff in december. but kristen refers to data. i have data in front of me. 7 million people registered in georgia, 75,000 registrations put in the pending box. were minors under the age

of 18. 3000 used a fake address. 3300 were not citizens. were already 900 registered. of the remainder, 75% had submitted erroneous social numbers. these were registrations that were submitted on paper rather than online, submitted by voter registration groups to increase voter registration, including a quarter from a group founded by the democratic candidate for governor, whose doing all the complaining. if these voter registration groups are going to register people, get the social security number right. register people who are noncitizens. get it right the first time so thedon't just get put into pending box. as for voter turnout, there's also data. minority turnout has gone up in georgia every year. every year barack obama was on the ballot and when he wasn't. from minorities in georgia every single election,

and the voter id law has been in race for several years now, six or seven years, and there are no major complaints, and court cases, including cases viewed by democratic judges, have approved it. host: john fund is joining us from new york, and kristen .larke we will go to crystal in philadelphia. thank you for waiting. good morning. my question is, this guy is busy trying to defend indefensible acts going on. native americans are being georgiansthe side, have their ballot registrations put on the side, just so that you can't vote. host: we'll get a response. john fund. --st: we have to have

complained about all the errors in the data. let's clean up the data. did nota administration file a single case asking any state to cleanup its data, so the states are doing it themselves. these ballots will be counted. all the voter has to do is go to the polls, present information that say they are who they say they are, and their provisional ballot will be counted. there is no evidence that in previous elections, a large number of provisional ballots are thrown out. ,f the registration is correct they will be registered correctly and can vote. incorrect, it will be corrected at the voting place. we have to have the rule of law and valid integrity. great country, we can protect the right to vote and at the same time make it hard to cheat or make mistakes or bureaucratic bungling. tweet fromis a

david. when pennsylvania tried voter suppression two cycles back, i made sure my name matched my license. it didn't. i used a junior when i first registered. phyllis is next, cleveland, ohio. in the state of ohio. in 2018, and voted republicans have made every effort they can think of to suppress the vote. there's people in a certain area, poor people have a tendency to move more than upper class or upper middle class. he'll say, they haven't voted in two years, their addresses changed, i'll send information to the wrong address. then all of a sudden, they are removed from the voter rolls. have a case where a lot of times, in the state of ohio, people try one time in ohio to have different voting hours for early voting.

a lot of the republican districts were staying open later during the evening. later at night, they had more hours. then they had to have a law to change that pattern. -- i thinkof times they have one college campus in predominantly black college, where they actually shortened the voting hours and the weekendome of early voting, whereas in the larger community of georgia, they expanded those hours. so kids who live on college campuses may not have the opportunity to vote, between the hours of 9-to-5 when you have to vote. host: secretary of state kemp, -- did not proofread what was in. as opposed to penalizing a voter for knowing how to spell their own name. and the color from cleveland? guest: exactly right, voters

should not be penalized for errors that occur in the state database. the frustration in the last think,s message, i resonates with a lot of people our processink needs to be streamlined. there are 33 states where you can vote early, 13 where you can't, we need to move into an area where we -- into an era practices,d uniform early voting and absentee voting rules uniform across the country. but the reality is that many elections in our country are hotly contested, come down to tight margins, and these voter suppression efforts stand to peel off the voters in ways that can ultimately -- in 2018, we should be working to make it easier to participate. host: what about the issue of

states rights? if states are going to run their own elections, we should not tolerate in 2018 that someone like brian kemp can impose an exact match theme, penalizing people who are -- needo make it on the not be penalized because of a mere discrepancy on one letter in their registration forms and error in a database. host: you can follow her work on andrs committee dot org, john fund on national review. caller: two things. first of all, if you are an adult, i think you can handle contacting your registrar's

office and making sure you are a voter. those are paid positions, it's a job. you can check with them and make sure you are legal. the second thing is, liberals are so anxious for open borders, 10, 12, who knows how many illegal people in this country. then you have to start scrutinizing the voting process. thank you. host: we've been -- guest: we've been a nation of immigrants for a long time. inre's nothing been broken the system except that we've had too many people that haven't been registered and are turning out to vote. when we compare and measure ourselves to other modern democracies, we often ranked at the bottom. one thing we run is a nonpartisan voter protection program called election protection, anchored by a -vote, working to

give people access to the information they need to vote, confirmed their registration status and so forth. caller said it is easy to reach the registrar -- that is one critical service that we to help improve the way democracy is carried out. john fund, you may disagree with the premise of this question. -- does the george are voter georgia voter cleanup disproportionately affect blacks? because the voter registration group that got these filled out primarily concentrated on minority areas because these were areas that were financed by liberal organizations. you're going to get more minorities -- so the question is of course we should clean up the

data roles. we should also talk to these outside voter registration them why soasked many of their forms are inaccurate. let's get it right the first time. i'm glad kristin recognized that states have some role in the elections. the constitution says states shall set the time and manner of -- e of the election had eight years to sue states int had data-riddled errors their voting systems and chose not to issue a single case, a single lawsuit. so now we have to deal with it closer to the election, which is the problem. let's clean up the voter rolls and have the federal government, in exchange for the money their to improvetates voting machines, let's sue the state's so we don't have these arguments so close to the

election. host: zach from harrisburg, democrats line. caller: thank you. i've been trying for a few months to say something. veteran, it of breaks my heart to see what the country is going through. but as a 59-year-old black man, you've got to realize we've seen and heard all these arguments before. -- to lynching, to people being killed trying to vote. this is just another aspect, a digital aspect of voter suppression. you know what i mean? as far as georgia is concerned, if he was going to run, instead of georgia, he should have just gave up his job as attorney general. how could he possibly expect us to believe that if these voter registrations are errors, when

those errors are to his advantage. we should point out that he is not attorney general, he's secretary of state, responsible for voter registrations in georgia, but we understand your point and will get the response. calleri think the color fo for his service. for histhe caller service. shelby versus alabama versus holder. -- section five federal review permission that requires states like georgia, texas, south carolina, and other states, that federal review of voting changes before they could be put into effect. one of the reasons we are having such an intense discussion about widespread and rampant voter suppression in our country today is because that ruling really opened up the floodgates to

voter suppression. many of these efforts we are talking about were absolutely blocked by that section five review process when we had it in place. since that time, we've seen officials in georgia, texas, and elsewhere, really racing forward with the same measures that were blocked because of their discriminatory effect on african-americans and other people of color. we restore the voting rights act, that federal law really was strong medicine that helped us block a lot of the dangerous and unfortunate measures we see playing out across our country today. -- : this is a vote register developmentally disabled people for absentee elections are stolen. another says rush limbaugh says there's lots of voting fraud, unable to produce one empirical example.

if you go to the heritage foundation database, all you have to do is type "voter fraud" and find 1200 recent cases of people not just indicted for voter fraud, but convicted here you can search by state, by crime, by individual. know, taking advantage of people is, i think, something that often happens in inner-city political machines. a few years ago, we had an actual example of a former congressman from pittsburgh, whose name was austin murphy. he was indicted and convicted of going into rest homes where there were alzheimer's patients, registering them to vote, then filling out their ballots for them. if a former congressman will do that, i don't know who else might. all i'm saying is a lot of things happen behind the curtain on election day. if people don't want to look, if

they want to a further rise, then they are turning a blind eye to real abuses of the american system. i wish that kristin's group had given help in st. louis when his election was stolen. i wish they had been there for freeman hendrix in detroit. minority-- there are candidates all over this country. if you go to the former democratic congressman from alabama, davis, who said for years when i was a democratic congressman, i said there were no -- there was no voter fraud, but i was offered the opportunity to commit voter fraud for my campaign. he eventually became so discussed that he wrote an op-ed and said i can't do this anymore. for voting fraud that suppressed the rights of minority voters and prevented them from getting good schools, decent public

services. people in this country are genuinely hurt by voter fraud. i've given you names in cities and i wish you would reach out to them, especially when they reach out to you, and offer help and support. it's not just about voter aboutssion, it is inner-city democratic machines crushing the rights and hopes and responsibilities of real people in their district. host: specific examples, kristen clarke here at how do you respond? guest: i look at the data he's talking about, which is not recent. it actually stretches back to decades. -- theu look at the denominator is critical. hundreds of millions of ballots cast. we are talking about isolated examples that represent about .0001% of all ballots cast in this country. he is making a mountain out of nothing and -- real problem that our civil rights organization deals with every day, tens of thousands of disenfranchised voterans by rampant

suppression measures that are unnecessary burdens and hurdles for people who merely want to have their voices heard. host: donna is next from salem. independent line. caller: good morning, thanks for taking my call. wanted to bring up what i think is a pretty significant issue. citizens.senior when they are appointed a guardian to a probate family court, they lose their right to vote. you don't know what you don't know until you know it, but when the courts across the country are targeting senior citizens, and they appoint a guardian, i don't think senior citizens are aware they lose their right to , to refuserry

psychotropic medications, their right to where they want to live. it strips them of so many rights have moree in prison rights than our elderly across the country. host: thanks for the call, is she right? there are states that take away the right to vote for withoutho are deemed sufficient mental capacity. there are states that take away the right to vote for people who have a felony conviction. i think it is an important to take a step back and look at some of the rules on the books in the state that outright disenfranchise people. some of them, i think, are necessary. some aren't. that takely the ones away the right to vote for people with convictions. in states like florida, there are 1.4 million otherwise eligible americans who can't vote because of a conviction. that might change because of a ballot initiative that is up before voters in that state.

many of these restrictions have discriminatory effects, but i think the caller raises an important issue that warrants a fresh look. host: the integrity of the u.s. voting system. john fund of the national review and kristen clarke with the lawyers committee for civil rights under law. our next caller is from the bbc parliament channel. thomas from london. caller: good morning, thank you for taking my call, washington journal c-span. 2012 whenew york in ie obama election was on, and was approached several times in the street by people with forms, about voting. just standing in manhattan. visiting relatives in boston. i said i'm not born here, i'm only on holiday. they kept following me. i thought it looked suspicious.

it had kind of a democratic undertone to it. i was put off by the whole business. thanks for the call. i saw a smile on your face, john fund. do you want to respond? in pennsylvania, there was a scandal where the secretary of state had to resign. at the dmv when they were asking people to renew their driver's licenses, when they were asking people if they wanted to register to vote, they forgot to ask if they were a citizen. lots of people got trapped in this where they registered to vote, and that can be a problem. if you are trying to apply for citizenship and someone has registered you to vote, that could be a mark against you later. in california, they have the same problem. at least 1500 noncitizens registered to vote who shouldn't be. this whole question confuses people in other countries. clinton had a royal commission -- britain had a royal

nationwideproposed voter id. i would like kristin to answer this question. with the exception of britain, transitioning now to voter id, can you name me an industrialized democracy in this world that does not require voter id at the polls? just one? host: a lot of the -- guest: a lot of the european countries that exceed us in participation automatically when they come of age, make election day a holiday, and you don't need arcane paper voter registration. question.t's not my do they require voter id at the polls? yes or no? these states are leaps and bounds ahead of the united states because they are automatically registering people. guest: the answer is -- guest: your question doesn't

make any sense. they are too far ahead. some do, some don't automatically register people. they all require you to show id at the polls and you can't give a single example of a country that doesn't do that. guest: in our country, you can pay your federal income taxes online. arevery respect in 2018, we working to streamline the delivery of federal services and make it easier for americans to interact with americans, except when -- guest: that is precisely why those georgia registration groups should not have done their registration online -- should have done their registration online, rather than on paper. those groups should have been working online rather than on paper. now you are talking about defying the law and taking away an avenue for people to get registered. been: no, it would have

wise to go online where the errors are much less. guest: a lot of people don't have access to computers. --er registration drives very commonplace in our country and a healthy thing for our democracy. i'm saddened to hear -- agree, let's register people. you can do it with a tablet, not paper and ink guest:. then hand out tablets to community groups across georgia. until you do, it is important to give people the avenue to register to vote in as many ways as possible. guest: of course, but there are a lot more errors. host: i want to follow up, does having a valid id verify the integrity of the process? question -- don't have a passport or driver's license. that's why in texas, when they initially put the restrictive id law in theoter

books, they disenfranchise people who had been long time -- and didn'to have a drivers license because they rely on public transportation. we aren't talking overwhelming numbers, but we are talking about eligible americans who deserve the right to vote, numbers that can impact the outcome of elections if you simply allowed people to be disenfranchised. i did direct it to kristen clarke, but i'll give you the chance to respond. that: i'll point out martin luther king the third, andrew young, jimmy carter, the former mayor of atlanta, have all endorsed the freedom card. this is a mockup of it. a photo id on everyone's social security card, make adjustments so they can be

better identified, and in some cases like in texas, that would suffice. those people endorsed the freedom card, why don't you? guest: let's not put the cart before the horse. when you've got a freedom card, just a mere notion and idea in your head. in the handsthat of every eligible american, i think we can talk about correcting this as another restriction on the right to vote. but it doesn't exist today. guest: why don't you work for it? -- don't deserve to be disenfranchised in states that -- go to regina from pennsylvania, republican line. caller: i want to say to the ify host, that i don't know she's not aware, but there's been business people in our part of the country and in the south who have had illegals steal their social security number,

use it fraudulently to get a job at that company, then they took that company and stole it off the business owner and took the business owner out of business. i don't know where you're coming social security numbers, there is no fraud, we don't have to worry. you really surprised me. i appreciate your figures and think they are great. the socialr hand, security card is only to be used for social security purposes. i certainly don't want my picture on a social security number so i can go vote and find everyone else in the world is going to know my social security number. this is the most stupid idea, i don't care where it came from. i don't know where you're coming from. social security is a private number, it has already been used, abused. every time i watch tv, if it's not a health commercial pushing drugs, you can lose your identity. thanks for bringing up the great

numbers, one point 8 million people were dead and registered to vote. that's what i want to hear, so please keep that up. but don't take more authority or more ability for people to steal my identity, and leave my social security number the way it is. host: we'll get a response. guest: we can have a debate on that, but there are of course other ways to do this. the social security number was originally not designed for identification purposes, but that has gone aboard and it has been used for that. it would be voluntary. you wouldn't have to have a picture on the social security card if he didn't want to. i just want to get beyond this tired, divisive debate about voter id versus no voter id. for anyone who doesn't, and the young makes this point. you can't -- cash or check, can't travel, can't do anything. so rather than argue, let's get people ids.

let's stop spending the money on legalten's spending fees, suing people, let's go talk about having the freedom card. they say it's just an idea. the way to make something a reality is to stop supporting it. her and her group won't support it. they move on to other subjects. i'm trying to have a compromise that saul's things. we can discuss the details later. she wants to sue, and that is apparently what she likes to do. guest: i want to talk about --toring the voting rights, in 2013. i want to talk about same-day registration opportunities and expanding chances for people to early vote and absentee vote. i want to talk about tearing down the barriers and hurdles that can help to make america the democracy that it should be, one where we have a higher turnout and participation rate than we have today. raleigh, is next from

north carolina. caller: john said something about rhode island. the guy in rhode island, he sat republicansl the got their ballots before november 6. the other, the democrats, -- november 8. , the freedom card he was talking about would not apply. host: john fund? absentee ballots are entirely different. you give up your right to a and there's more chance of fraud and losing stuff in the mail. but in rhode island, it was a democratic secretary of state who passed the law, the legislature, including the leading african-american state senator and house speaker who intorted the law, signed law by a governor who wasn't a

republican. and it isn't working. the incident he mentioned has nothing to do with the law. it was voted in and registered by the democrats. elections in providence are more honest now and you can ask anyone. host: we have four or five minutes left. in college park, maryland, democrats line. caller: thanks, i really enjoy c-span. i guess i've heard two things, one question and one comment. john, i appreciate the idea of if we have voter id laws, it could solve everything, that to recentecially since this decision about the native americans in north dakota, they have voter id but it got moved a little bit. you can't have po box anymore's, you have to have a street address. maybe in georgia when they close pull stations, that could be another thing. that seems to be the bigger issue, if we just had this then

it will really solve things. it seems like there's something else out there. my question is, under president commission for fraud, for voting fraud, i think it was headed by kris kobach, and what i understood from that, if there was going to be some place to really get to something to figure out if there's huge fraud going on, that would be the commission that would find it. from what i understand, they would not find anything or at least didn't release anything, and i think they are disbanded now. host: kristin, then john. the election integrity commission has been disbanded. president trump signed an executive order dismantling that commission that really was elected for one purpose, to promote and lay the groundwork for a lot of these voter suppression efforts. we filed litigation against the

commission. it was unlawful, and the administration had no choice but to shut it down. i hope is that we can see a justice department that is and reinvigorated, and commit itself to once again in forcing the voting rights act and addressing the barriers that many minority communities face across the country. talked about native americans in north dakota who don't have ids with street addresses that are now required by the law. we talked about georgia and texas and other places. in 2018, we want to fight for a democracy where every eligible american can participate. host: john fund? guest: if the trump administration has been tardy on some of these issues, the explanation is the head of the -- only confirmed this month, 21 months after president trump was inaugurated. that's a long time.

sorry, 18 months. commission was commission -- trump was immediately attacked as a voter suppression commission before they could have any votes or hearings. they had one hearing, then the litigation came in, and the president decided to disband it. we never know what they would have concluded. they werencluded going in one direction. democrats on the commission decided they wanted to gum the works up. when weknow is that have independent, nonpartisan investigations, like the one in new york city, new york city is obviously run by democrats. what do they do? send people to vote in the name of people who are dead, out-of-state, or in prison. they succeeded 97% of the time because the state doesn't require voter id.

it shows you this is almost the perfect crime. know it happens unless you take precaution. precautions can be pretty simple. voter id. i once again say, jimmy carter, martin luther king iii, andy young, they all say the same thing. but let's not go to court, let's solve the problem. call,we have one more albert from chicago. caller: i'll try to be brief. i have a comment and question that i would like your guest to answer. in 2012, during the presidential pennsylvania republican state official was giving a speech where he was taking off all the compliments they were doing at the time. and he said, quote, voter id, which would allow mitch romney to become our next president, done.

we know he said this because he was dumb enough to say it on video. my question that i want both guests to answer, mr. fund has been waving around this freedom card. forms ofwrong with the id that people have been using , which all to vote of a sudden became unacceptable after barack obama was elected? for the call.u john fund, we'll give you the last word on that point. most states until recently didn't require voter id. in pennsylvania, there was almost no requirement whatsoever. the requirement that was coming in was the first one. look. the partisans believe that one do partisans believe one law is going to benefit them versus the other party? yes, both sides believe that. believes itovernor will benefit her, and the republican in pennsylvania believes cutting down on

machines for voter fraud. let's look at the actual law. does it improve elections so that they can be free and fair? that should be the standard, not whether some people believe it helps them or not. raises an important point, and that is we have to peel back the layers behind the voter suppression measures that are being peddled back around the country. often times we find the smoking gun that shows us that purpose, the unlawful purpose underlying these measures. it is not just in pennsylvania. we have heard officials in wisconsin. they are all about silencing americans and locking people out in ways that can distort the outcome of our elections, and that is really something that goes to the integrity of the world process. host: your committee is called

the lawyers' committee for civil rights under law, kristen clarke serving as president and executive director, and joining us from new york, john fund, the co-author of "who is counting?" he is also a columnist for the national review. announcer: with the midterm elections days away, watch competition for the control of congress. see the candidates and debates from key house and senate races. make c-span your primary source for campaign 2018. announcer: here is a look at tonight's c-span schedule. ," author james mann and his biography of george w. bush. at 9:00, british prime minister theresa may takes questions from members of the british house of commons.

after that, a conversation from today's washington journal with a cnn program host, who talks about the midterm election climate and political polarization. "t 11:00, a re-air of that "q&a program with james mann. announcer: this week on "q&a," james mann, author and resident of the john surratt in university school of advanced international studies. he talks about his biography of george w. bush. james mann, author of the biography on george w. bush. is a friend of yours who had never met george w. bush asked you to tell him about him, what would you say? james: